Re: environment settings

[Stephane Chazelas <Stephane_Chazelas@xxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 08:33:02AM +0000, Jörg Sommer wrote:
[...]
> > Which in a way makes sense though is not very useful. ~/.zshrc
> > is your shell configuration file. ~/.zprofile is you session
> > configuration file.
> >
> > Generally, in ~/.zshrc, you put stuff that affects the behavior
> > of interactive shells (sets shell options, defines shell
> > aliases, configure completions).
> >
> > In ~/.zprofile, you define what affects any process started in
> > your session not necessarily only the shell processes.
> 
> And what's the meaning of .zshenv? I use it for my environment variables
> like EDITOR, because my session is started by X.
[...]

My understanding is that ~/.zshenv is for hacking in situations
where you can't do otherwise.

Your X login procedure should source your .zprofile or some file
that is sourced by your .zprofile if you want the same settings
in X sessions and non-X sessions. Or it should source/read
another session config file that defines env variables.

.zshenv is to fix up situations where it's not possible in my
opinion. It's like the SHELLOPTS, BASH_ENV variables with bash
or ENV with some kshs, it should be used with extreme care and
probably not permanently.

Now, that's one way to see things. You can have a different
approach where .zshenv is central, but my feeling is that it's
asking for trouble.

-- 
Stéphane